(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said his former boss taking away his Secret Service protection was “political retribution.”
“I don’t think there’s any other conclusion you can draw from it,” Bolton said on “Morning in America” on Thursday.
Trump revoked Bolton’s protection the day after being sworn in for his second, nonconsecutive term as president. Bolton had been facing assassination threats after the U.S. killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
Losing Secret Service protection makes Bolton and his family “a lot more vulnerable to this Iranian threat, assuming they follow the media in Tehran, which we know they do,” he said.
Others from the State Department had been allowed to use the Secret Service, Bolton pointed out.
“I hope all of those people retain their coverage because we were all facing the same threat,” he said.
Asked by a reporter why he pulled Bolton’s security clearance, Trump answered that his former adviser was a “very dumb person.”
“I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me, they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger,” Trump said, according to NewsNation partner The Hill.
Bolton said the insult is “typical of (Trump’s) juvenile behavior.”
“I don’t think it’s the kind of image the president of the United States should project to the rest of the world,” Bolton said.